Tag: Bully Love

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bully Love by Patricia Colleen Murphy

 

Go Anywhere

A Phoenix park ranger discovered a petroglyph

had been excised. She followed the trail rut

to the McMansion of a man who answered

his door dressed in a towel, the stolen rock

well-lit above his mantel. And what is there

to say? I’m certain there are topics about which

I know nothing. I moved from Ohio to this desert

with two suitcases and a poorly laid plan. The first

week I was here I called the landlord to complain

about dust and he explained monsoons to me.

I’m still bitching my way through triple digits.

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?

You and I can, now that all four of our parents died.

I thought I’d move to France, maybe lose too much

weight. But I fell in love with you and here we are.

So now what? Will we go to the Costco, maybe Home

Depot? I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll have time.

Should we go to the park, help ourselves to free wall art?

Since living here already feels like stealing?

 

  —

This selection comes from Patricia Colleen Murphy’s Collection of Poetry, Bully Love, available from Press 53.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, published as a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection.  Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Danielle Hanson is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize, 2018) and Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017).  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals, won the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub, was Finalist for 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award and was nominated for several Pushcarts and Best of the Nets.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books, and is on the staff of the Atlanta Review. Her poetry has been the basis for visual art included in the exhibit EVERLASTING BLOOM at the Hambidge Center Art Gallery, and Haunting the Wrong House, a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. More about her at daniellejhanson.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bully Love by Patricia Colleen Murphy

 

Salome

How does a man

breeze into this

canyon with only

a pocketful of

nuts. Plaid

coat, walking stick.

Handkerchiefing

forehead. Sniffly

dog furring

pounding descent

into the canyon.

Foot sweat, backache.

He claims trout,

stream fed, catches them

two at a time. He will

wander down to not

disturb us. Calls

dog breath dripping tongue

mid-drink. They are

tail flash, disappearing

trail. We are

warm camp stove, fettuccine,

Bushmills flask,

sleeping bag, camp chair,

water filter, coffee mug,

kiss me. We are

ten miles deep

into the gash.

 

  —

This selection comes from Patricia Colleen Murphy’s Collection of Poetry, Bully Love, available from Press 53.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, published as a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection.  Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Danielle Hanson is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize, 2018) and Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017).  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals, won the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub, was Finalist for 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award and was nominated for several Pushcarts and Best of the Nets.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books, and is on the staff of the Atlanta Review. Her poetry has been the basis for visual art included in the exhibit EVERLASTING BLOOM at the Hambidge Center Art Gallery, and Haunting the Wrong House, a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. More about her at daniellejhanson.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bully Love by Patricia Colleen Murphy

 

Blue Juice Sky

 

Stalled, wing-deep in road-kill, the vulture

stares towards our rushing, flicks away

just as our tires straddle another anonymous carcass.

The bird jerks skyward, his beak packed with flesh, bone.

At the trailhead our doors open, our cold air meets hot.

Temperatures converge and compete for all the dark

pockets of my body. We discuss what won’t fit

into my pack: cook stove, white fuel, tent and pads,

a bladder of wine. I am softer. We know my lungs will

cramp and fill, offering fluid like a pot of strained peas.

The sun is you: everywhere. In moments my skin is moist.

My eyes pound and film. Rock and dirt shimmer like light.

Three hours deep we startle a pack of coatimundi. As each

disappears over the ridge I remember my neighbor in and out

of sight on his roof, his a/c whining with some inefficacy,

his wife at the window, bare breast exposed, the baby clawing

like a soft red lizard. I can’t decide when to care for you. Or how.

 

  —

This selection comes from Patricia Colleen Murphy’s Collection of Poetry, Bully Love, available from Press 53.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, published as a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection.  Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Danielle Hanson is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize, 2018) and Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017).  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals, won the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub, was Finalist for 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award and was nominated for several Pushcarts and Best of the Nets.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books, and is on the staff of the Atlanta Review. Her poetry has been the basis for visual art included in the exhibit EVERLASTING BLOOM at the Hambidge Center Art Gallery, and Haunting the Wrong House, a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. More about her at daniellejhanson.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bully Love by Patricia Colleen Murphy

 

Remission

 

Pigeons nest in the front palms

song clocking the afternoon

their white rain storming.

Birds remind us who was first on this earth.

The universe dares us to touch anything.

Yesterday we walked your boyhood streets

overgrown with oaks, watched your father

filling just enough space to not be gone,

tossed rocks into the Severn river,

took the 10 a.m. flight back to Phoenix.

Today when I enter the car my earrings blaze,

burn my neck when I turn my head to back

out of my parking space. Some people

are longer for this world than others.

I want to hold them in my hands like a bird.

 

  —

This selection comes from Patricia Colleen Murphy’s Collection of Poetry, Bully Love, available from Press 53.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, published as a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection.  Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Danielle Hanson is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize, 2018) and Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017).  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals, won the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub, was Finalist for 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award and was nominated for several Pushcarts and Best of the Nets.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books, and is on the staff of the Atlanta Review. Her poetry has been the basis for visual art included in the exhibit EVERLASTING BLOOM at the Hambidge Center Art Gallery, and Haunting the Wrong House, a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. More about her at daniellejhanson.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bully Love by Patricia Colleen Murphy

 

Goodbye, Ohio

 

I think this is what I know:

corn in moronic rows. A few

cows lisping near the barn.

Father in the house cleaning a dish.

Mother cozy in her latest asylum.

Ragweed descends like snow.

Crops on the brain,

father sends me to mice the fields,

his low-ground cat-lover child.

I find no mice skimming the dirt.

I find no cicadas, no starlings.

The sun will come careening

through the kitchen window.

And I will bolt west for

my own feline sky.

 

  —

This selection comes from Patricia Colleen Murphy’s Collection of Poetry, Bully Love, available from Press 53.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Danielle Hanson.

Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Bully Love, published as a Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection.  Her collection Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press) won the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Stephen Dunn, and the 2017 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Danielle Hanson is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize, 2018) and Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017).  Her work has appeared in over 70 journals, won the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub, was Finalist for 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award and was nominated for several Pushcarts and Best of the Nets.  She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books, and is on the staff of the Atlanta Review. Her poetry has been the basis for visual art included in the exhibit EVERLASTING BLOOM at the Hambidge Center Art Gallery, and Haunting the Wrong House, a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. More about her at daniellejhanson.com.